Little Raindrop, on the Effects of the Literary Movement

The bigger picture is the revolution of language, and on the smaller, it’s how these texts are easily understood, by children who are only beginning to start school, translated…

A few days ago, my daughter sent me the text of my first-grade grandson’s reciting a text out of his textbook for us. Ahhh, he’d only, begun recognizing the characters, and can already recite them so very well!

The text was a short poem “Little Raindrop”:

“The Little Raindrop Loved to Sing/Drip, Drip, Drip/Grandpa Thunder Heard it/Rumble, Rumble, Rumble, Played the Drums to the Beats of His Songs/the Little Raindrop Loved Dancing/Grandma Lightning Saw/Zap, Zap, Zap/Setting Up the Lights/Little Raindrop Arrived into the Mountains/Drip~Drop~Drip~Drop/He’d Gotten Happier, Dancing Along Now/The Little Raindrop Traveled Across the Oceans/Splash, Splash, Splash/He’d, Sung Even Louder Now”

He’s only in the first grade, and already had such wonderful poem to read, suck a blessed and lucky child he is.

It’s the different eras now, thinking back to my own first-grade text, everything is so straight up and very, concrete, plus there’s the illustrations, not allowing any room for education at all, for instance, “the peach blossoms, red, the plum blossoms, white”, with the two fruit trees, with the two colored flowers as illustration; “The Little White Dog Chasing the Ball, the Ball Ran, the Dog Chased After it”, the first illustration was a white puppy, squatting, biting down a white ball, the second, the puppy, chasing the ball that’s, gotten away from it.

the illustration from the textbook here, found online…

“Come, come, come, come to school, go, go, go, go study”, two scenes, first, a few children, with backpacks on, entering the schools, another, the students sat at their desks, studying; “the skies are darkened, the wind raged, dad’s gone out to fish, why isn’t he home yet?”, the illustration had darkened skies, with the rains, falling into the oceans, where there was, a fishing boat.

Now, as I’d heard “the Little Raindrop”, although it’s written in every day language, but, as the poet paved the way, each word, each line, gives off vivid imageries, leading the children to discover, the “greatness” of the words, and get the children to learn to love to read. Unlike how it wasn’t until after I was in high school, when I’d come into contact with “Essays by Famous Writers”, then, I’d developed this love for reading, I’d started too late.

From when we were younger, the raindrops, the thunder, the lightning, were like our old friends, something that’s, too ordinary to us, but, I could’ve, never imagined, how they can, become so lively, through the words, not only was my grandson having tons of fun reciting, I too, started loving this poem out of his textbook as well!

And so, this, is all in part of the movement started in 1910, making the texts easily understood, compared to the formerly written texts, using traditional Chinese way of speaking, and there are pros, AND cons of this, but, in the earlier schooling years, this would probably be a good building block, because as students grow older, they will start learning the ancient texts, and, if you can’t even get the plain languages, how can you come to understand the more complex ancient texts later on as you entered into a higher level of education?